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Textures
Textures are image maps that overlays polygon meshes. This can either be a prop or clothing mesh. To create these textures, designers use an image editor application such as Adobe Photoshop, GIMP or Paint.NET. Designers usually start out with a UV map as a template (which outlines the mesh) and draws over this on a separate layer. Sometimes reference textures are used as well to know exactly where something is located for a more visual approach. There are plenty of resources on the internet to get you started creating custom textures, especially in the Utherverse forums. Photo Editing Software You can use a variety of softwares to make textures and images. *GIMP *Photoshop *Paint.Net *Paint Texture sizes and preventing black borders Proper_Dimensions (prevent black borders) First of all, the dimensions (width and height) of a texture need to be a power of two. This means sizes like 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64, 128, 256, etc. The reason for this is the way images are handled by your video card. It is possible to use other image dimensions, but you will see black edges on your props if your texture detail is not set to high. (Texture detail is in your settings in world. It can be set to low, medium, or high.) If you need to use an image that is not the right size, you can open it in an image editing program and resize it. Try to find the closest power of two size to the original image size. For example, if the image is 224x137, you would probably want to make it 256x128. It does not matter if the image looks a little stretched or squashed. You can correct this by scaling the prop in world. If you do not follow this rule, anyone with their texture detail set to low or medium will see black borders around all of your textures and they will not fit your props. Texture Size (reduce lag, prevent crash or hang while loading) The next thing you need to account for, and possibly the most important, is the image's size. Remember, smaller is better! All textures have to be loaded onto your computer's video card. There is limited memory to load these textures. Video cards on average these days have between 128MB and 1024MB of video memory. If you, or someone you want to visit your property, does not have enough video memory to load all of the textures, bad things will happen. Usually, they will crash out of the world while loading and not be able to enter the property at all. You have to also remember that there are a lot of other things already taking up room on the video card, such as character avatars, the interface, and everything else that you can see on the screen. So on a 128MB video card, you may only have 80MB or less actually available for your custom textures. Misconceptions It is a common belief by many people that the size of an image file is related to the memory it uses when it is loaded. This is not correct. Images are compressed when saved to reduce storage space usage and to speed downloads. However, for an image to be loaded and displayed on your screen, it has to be uncompressed. So, the size of the file will almost always be smaller (usually significantly smaller) than the size of the image in your video card's memory. How it actually works There are two things that determine the amount of memory a texture will require: the size of the image and the color depth of the image. Usually, a JPG is 24 bit (3 byte) color depth, and a PNG is 32 bit (4 byte) color depth (PNG is larger because it allows transparency). The total number of bytes an image uses is its width times its height times its color depth in bytes (W x H x C). So a 128x128 PNG is 0.06MB, while a 256x256 PNG is 0.25MB, or 4 times as large. The memory requirement grows very quickly as the image size grows. A 1024x1024 PNG takes a full 4MB. It wouldn't take that many of those to kill a 128MB video card! Choosing a size The important thing to remember when choosing a size for a texture is that the image will be stretched to fit whatever prop you put it on, regardless of its size. The size of the prop determines how big it looks in world, not the size of the texture. So, if you make a 128x128 texture, then shrink it to 64x64, and you cannot tell the difference in world, by all means use the smaller one. Common texture sizes that are used are 128x128 for smaller or less detailed props and 256x256 for larger or more detailed props. Sometimes you can get away with 64x64 and still have a good looking texture. Large images like 512x512 should only be used in rare cases where a large amount of detail needs to be preserved for the texture to look right in world. If you just need a solid color, you can actually make a 1x1 or 2x2 image and it will still cover the whole object. Common texture sizes and their memory requirements Size of Image - Memory as 24 bit JPG - Memory as 32 bit PNG *1024x1024 - 3MB - 4MB *1024x512 - 1.5MB - 2MB *512x512 - 0.75MB - 1MB *512x256 - 0.38MB - 0.5MB *256x256 - 0.19MB - 0.25MB *256x128 - 0.09MB - 0.13MB *128x128 - 0.05MB - 0.06MB *128x64 - 0.02MB - 0.03MB *64x64 - 0.01MB - 0.015MB *64x32 - 0.006MB - 0.008MB *32x32 - 0.003MB - 0.004MB *16x16 - 0.0007MB - 0.001MB *8x8 - 0.0002MB - 0.0002MB These are not the only image sizes you can use, they are just some common ones. File Size (speed loading time) The last thing to consider is the file size of an image. All images have to download from the internet before they can be displayed in world. So, the smaller a file is, the faster it will download. These savings can quickly add up when you enter a region and have lots of things to download all at once. The best way to make the file smaller is to make the image smaller. In addition to this, you can also compress the image file. JPG images usually offer the best compression, but may make small errors in the image if you look at it closely. Usually, however, this is not noticeable unless you really get close and study the image. PNG will compress an image without affecting the quality at all, but generally the compression is not as good. Also, JPG images will not save transparency, so you need to use PNG if there is transparency in the image. Category:Clothing Category:Decorating